Part 21

The great people do their duty as they ought, and come in their carriages; which make a show and give an air of regality to the affair. Many of them have had early high-priced tickets given to them in consideration of their subscribed guineas; it being held the right thing to do to give to those who can afford to pay, trusting to the pence of the multitude for the rest. Nevertheless these great creatures regard their presence there as a _corvée_ which they must fulfil, but at the least cost possible to themselves; so they make up parties to meet at a certain time, and endure the stewards, who talk fine and are important, with the best philosophy granted them by nature. When the second prices come, then the real fun of the fair begins. The great people are uninterested. The indifferently grown flowers which are offered for prizes do not call forth their enthusiasm; but the smaller folk think them superb, and express their admiration with unstinted delight. When the gardener of a neighbouring lord exhibits a good specimen from his choicest plants, not for competition but as a model for imitation, their enthusiasm knows no bounds; and a fine alamanda or a richly-coloured dracæna receives almost divine honours. As a rule, the flowers in these local shows are poor enough; but the fruit is often good and the vegetables are magnificent. The highest efforts of competition are usually devoted to onions and beans; but potatoes come in for their due share, and the summer celery is for the most part an instance of misdirected power. The great houses carry off the first prizes--the poor little cottage plots, cultivated at odd hours under difficulties, not touching them in value. The gentlemen say they give their prizes to their gardeners; but that does not help the cottagers who have spent time and money and hope in this unequal struggle of pigmies with giants. In some places they divide the classes, and give prizes to the gentlefolks apart, and to the cottagers by themselves. In which case they fulfil the Scriptures literally, and give most to those who already have most.

All the local oddities are sure to be at these fêtes. There is the harmless imbecile, who wanders about the roads with a peacock's feather in his battered old cap, and who talks to himself when he cannot find another listener; and there is the stalwart lady proprietor who farms her own land and knows as much about roots and beasts as the best of them. She is reported to have thrashed her man in her time, and is said to be a crack shot and the best roughrider for miles round. There is the ruined yeoman who came into a good property when he was a handsome young fellow with the ball at his foot, but who has drunk himself from affluence to penury, and from sturdy health to palsy and delirium tremens, yet who has always a kindly word from his betters, having been no man's enemy but his own, and even at his worst being a good fellow in a sort of way. There is the farmer who is supposed capable of buying up all the leaner gentry in a batch, but who, being a misogynist, lives by himself in his rambling old ruined Hall, with a hind to do the scullery maid's work, and never a petticoat about the place. There is the self-taught man of science whose quantities are shaky when he tells you the names of his treasures, but whose knowledge of local fossils, of rare plants, of concealed antiquities, is true so far as it goes, if of too great importance in his estimate of things; and side by side with him is the self-made poet, whose verses are not always easy to scan and whose thoughts are apt to express themselves mistily. These and more are sure to be at the fête bringing; their peculiarities as their quota, and giving that indescribable but pleasant local flavour which is half the interest of the thing.

There is a great deal of practical democracy in these gatherings if the grand people stay into the time of the second prices; which however, they generally do not. If they do, then ragged coats jostle the squire's glossy broadcloth, and rude boys crumple the fresh silks and muslins of the ladies with the most communistic unconcern. The shopgirl and farmer's daughters come out in gorgeous array, with bonnets and skirts, streamers and furbelows, of wonderful construction; and their sisters of more cultivated taste regard their exaggerated toilets as moral crimes. But the poor things are happy in their ugly finery; and, as millinery is by no means an exact science, they may be pardoned if they adopt monstrosities on their own account which a year or so ago had been sanctioned by fashion. Sometimes Punch and Judy, 'as performed before the Queen and Prince Albert,' helps on the enjoyment of the day, with the '----' softened out of respect for the clergyman. Sometimes an acrobat lies down on the grass and twirls a huge ball between his feet, which sets all the little boys to do the like in imitation, and perhaps brings down many a maternal hand on fleshy places as the result. In some localities a troop of little girls in scarlet and white plait ribbons dance round a maypole and are called inappropriately morris-dancers. Perhaps there are fireworks at the end of all things; when the set pieces will not light simultaneously in all their parts, the catherine-wheels have the disastrous trick of sticking, and only the Roman candles and the rockets succeed as they should. But the gaping crowd is vociferous and good-natured, and holds the whole affair to have been splendid. There is a great deal of coarse jollity among the men and women over the failures and successes alike, and if the fête is in the North there is sure to be more drink afloat than is desirable. Headaches are the rule of the next morning, with perhaps some things lost which can never be regained. Yet, in spite of the inevitable abuses, these local fêtes are things worthy of encouragement; and perhaps if the great people would enter into them more heartily, and remain on the ground longer, the lower orders would behave themselves better all through, and there would not be so much rowdyism at the end. It does not seem to us that this would be an unendurable sacrifice of time and personal dignity for the pleasure and morality of the neighbourhood where one lives.

THE END.

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Transcriber's note: Minor spelling and punctuation inconsistencies, mainly hyphenated words, have been harmonized. In this version, the oe ligature is represented by the separate characters oe, e.g. manoeuvre.